TFF of Europe

[Autumn]

Winter, I am forced to agree with you. Hollywood only casts the next "hottie" nowadays and a shitload of great actors weither go to waste or get forced to minimal roles in movies. By the way, James Woods is also a brilliant actor who is completely underrated. He made way to few movies when he was actively acting. And the ones he did make, were really good.

James Woods is pretty good, although he was stereotyped into a "bad guy" role in many movies and then there was one film which I saw that also starred Michael J Fox. The film was a comedy but I can't remember the name. I would've liked to see more of James Woods. On a side note, Gary Busey always struck me as a poor man's James Woods.

Bill Murray is also way too underrated. I admit, he did have good streak of success earlier in his career but it was by no means rediculously huge. He deserved more. And what makes me even more disgusted by hollywood, is that they didn't cash in on his talent later on anymore. They started only casting "popular" actors.

Bill Murray isn't that underrated. Many of his recent films have received critical acclaim, i.e. Lost in Translation, The Life Aquatic and Broken Flowers. Unfortunately, he's doing the "tired of life and sardonic" character quite a lot now. Maybe people just don't find him funny when doing Ghostbusters style humour.

Christian Bale is also a very kickass actor. He was awesome in Batman Begins, played his role perfectly in American Psycho, and shows no sign of stopping unless Hollywood keeps him down.

I like Christian Bale. He won't get kept down because he's considered good looking. He's done some bad films, like Ring of Fire and Metroland. The former was just shit but the latter was low budget and one of his early films, and to be fair it wasn't a complete disgrace. For those who care, the lead female in Metroland, Emily Watson, also stars as the woman Preston loves in Equilibrium. American Psycho was the film I first saw Bale in, and he was awesome. The other areas of the film were really good too, in fact, now I think about it some more I saw it on the small TV in my room and I didn't know what it was. However! The presentation was so slick and the narration at the beginning was so strangely alluring I just kept watching. And it turned out to be well worth my time.

And yet another underrated yet equally talented actor is Kevin Spacey. He's played mutliple roles which he geniously delivered yet he is still not hyped as one of the greatest actors. Screw hollywood and it's stupid hierarchy. All you need to cash billions for a movie nowadays is to cast Orlando Bloom, Colin Farrell, and some Paris Hilton dits to act "cute".

Maybe Kevin Spacey was underrated in his early career (see Consenting Adults) but these days he's very well respected. I'm not sure if there was any press coverage of the hype surrounding his directorial debut in theatre. Anyway, there was a lot simply because of his status in Hollywood. His play received mixed reviews.

Orlando Bloom is a poor actor, I have no respect for him. The only good films I've seen with him in were the Lord of the Rings trilogy and Pirates of the Carribean. And they were good in spite of him. Kingdom of Heaven was appalling and unintentionally hilarious, whereas for Troy I'll quote what someone wrote on IMDB: "Troy was a load, it made be sick watching all the inaccuracies, not to mention that ***** Orlando Bloom." If you want to check this it is in the thread about casting white actors for lead roles in Battle of Red Cliff. I am so, so excited about Battle of Red Cliff - it's directed by John Woo and stars Chow Yun Fat, Tony Leung and Andy Lau. The guy in my avatar is Tony Leung.

FilmFour have a Studio Ghibli season. This week they're showing various works at around 5pm each day. I watched a bit of Laputa the other day, because I heard it was a classic, but it struck me as average and then I had to go so I couldn't see the end. Although because it's for kids I suppose it's easy to predict. Yesterday they had My Neighbour Totoro, and from what I watched it wasn't too bad; but nothing special. Once again, I had to stop watching before the end.